Ondine has done a terrific job in recording the music of the man
considered by many to be Finland’s most important composer after
Sibelius. Here, in this generously-filled set they bring together
a substantial amount of his choral music. These are reissues of previous
releases so one important recent work could not be included. What
I presume will be the first recording of Rautavaara’s Missa
a cappella, which received its UK première at the Cheltenham
Music Festival in summer 2012 (review),
will be released by Ondine in spring 2013. I note, however, that the
short Credo, though penned as long ago as 1972, has been incorporated
into the new Mass. This piece opens the second disc in this collection.

All these recordings were made in collaboration with the composer
and they present a pretty full picture of his choral compositions
covering an extended period between 1957 and 2000.

Rautavaara has achieved a significant worldwide reputation over the
last few decades but his promise was recognised by a master when he
was in his twenties. In 1955 the Koussevitzsky Foundation marked the
90th birthday of Sibelius by awarding a scholarship in
his honour which would allow a young Finnish composer of his choice
an opportunity to study in the USA. Sibelius selected Rautavaara and
two years of study with Vincent Persichetti at the Juilliard was the
result. In the booklet we are told that choral music has been part
of his output since the 1950s. Rautavaara says he “never considered
[himself] a choral composer in particular” but Kimmo Korhonen
includes in his extensive booklet note the following observation:
“In terms of the number of works written, choral music is the
most extensive category in his output, and it is highly diverse in
terms of style, expression and content.” The diversity of Rautavaara’s
choral output is well illustrated in this set.

Three substantial works dominate the set. Vigilia is
a setting of the Orthodox All-Night Vigil, comprising Vespers (1971)
and Matins (1972). In fact, what is recorded here is a shortened concert
version of the score, made by the composer in 1986. This is very different
from, say, Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil for we are told
that Rautavaara deliberately eschewed the Romantic tradition of Orthodox
liturgical writing and went back to original Byzantine chant. The
result is a deeply impressive work for soloists and a cappella choir.
Vigilia strikes me as a composition of great sincerity and
eloquence and while the composer may have gone back to Byzantine chant
he has refracted that through late twentieth-century musical techniques.
The score consists of 34 movements, several of them very short, and
Rautavaara’s achievement is to introduce a considerable degree
of musical variety while remaining within the discipline of music
that does not jar with the Orthodox tradition. The choral writing
is consistently resourceful and interesting. Among many movements
that caught my ear was the Troparion in Vespers (No. 12) in which
we hear firstly a lovely mezzo solo followed by a soprano solo, all
against a background of choral whispering. The result is a movement
that is as fascinating as it is lovely. A little earlier the Evening
Hymn (No. 7), which consists largely of homophonic choral writing,
is very beautiful. The Katabasis movement in Matins (No 30) is, in
fact, the Magnificat. This is the most substantial movement in terms
of length and it’s a very interesting setting. Incidentally,
a couple of the movements, Psalm of Invocation and Evening
Hymn, have been published separately and are included as individual
items on Disc two in this collection. I should imagine that this is
very taxing music but the performance by the Finnish Radio Chamber
Choir under Timo Nuoranne is absolutely superb. The various soloists
all sing very well and special mention should be made of Jyrki Korhonen,
whose cavernous, imposing bass voice is ideal for this music.

Disc four brings two more substantial works, this time both accompanied
by orchestra. On the Last Frontier is a setting, in
English, of words by Edgar Allan Poe. In effect it’s a substantial
seascape for chorus and orchestra, described in the notes as “a
fresco-like work painted in broad strokes, dominated by the opulent
sonority of Rautavaara’s late synthesis style and swelling oceanic
textures.” The tone is set by a vast, powerful paragraph for
orchestra alone, which acts as the Introduction. At 5:42 this accounts
for nearly a quarter of the length of the work and, indeed, that underscores
the importance of the orchestra throughout the piece. The choral writing,
much of which is homophonic, is by no means lacking in interest but
the chorus part is, perhaps, broad-brush in nature by comparison with
the often-teeming orchestral textures underneath. Is this a metaphor,
perhaps, with the choir representing mankind travelling on the surface
of the ocean while the orchestra represents the tumultuous life and
currents under the surface of the sea? Delius and even Vaughan Williams
came to my mind on occasions as I listened to the work. It’s
an imposing piece and the performance under Leif Segerstam could fairly
be described as fervent.

I honestly don’t know what to make of True & False
Unicorn. It sets poems by the American poet and film
maker, James Broughton (1913-1999). I suspect - though this isn’t
explicitly stated in the notes - that all the texts come from Broughton’s
1957 collection of poems which bear the same title. Apparently Rautavaara
encountered the poetry in the 1950s and conceived an immediate desire
to set them to music but did not do so until prompted by a commission
for a work for chamber choir, speakers and orchestra in 1971. The
work was revised more than once, the final revision in 2000, which
is heard here, dispensing with passages of electronic music - orchestral
interludes, one at the start of each of the four sections, replaced
the electronics. The resulting work is a strange, intriguing score.
Part of the strangeness, I’m sure, arises because I don’t
know what Broughton’s aim was in these poems, nor what was Rautavaara’s
intention in setting them. Perhaps the Finnish composer views this
work as a whimsical exercise; certainly a few of the movements, such
as the ninth and the eleventh, seem firmly tongue-in-cheek. Some of
the movements involve a form of Sprechgesang or Sprechstimme.
Usually one of the speaker soloists joins the choir in these sections
though the choir alone has one such section (No 18). These sections
are emphatically not to my taste though other listeners may respond
more positively to the spiky, quirky nature of these movements. In
sharp contrast, some of the movements are very beautiful such as movement
four, which has gentle, radiant music for the choir, or movement nineteen,
which consists of chaste, simple music for women’s voices, lightly
accompanied. By design Rautavaara employs a variety of musical styles
in this score, including jazz, spirituals and even a skit on God
save the Queen. As I say, it’s an intriguing work with which
I’ve yet to come to terms.

There are a good number of shorter works, most of them a cappella,
on discs two and three and these cover a wide spectrum of styles and
genres. Disc two includes several sacred works, including what we
are told is, astonishingly, the first-ever setting of the Magnificat
ever written in Finland. It’s a five-movement composition and
I’m not sure that it would suit liturgical use. The music is
consistently interesting and contains many lovely passages. Canción
de nuestro tiempo, though it comes on disc two, is a secular
work. It’s a setting, in Spanish, of three poems by Lorca and
much of the music is powerful and intense. The first of the three
settings, ‘Fragmentos de agonia’, includes an impassioned
mezzo-soprano solo, splendidly sung here. The last piece, ‘Ciudad
sin sueño’ (‘Sleepless city’), was written
at the time of the siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian conflict and
actually bears the subtitle ‘Nocturno del Sarajevo’.

Disc three brings us more Lorca settings in the form of the earlier
Lorca Suite but this time the poems are in Finnish translation.
This is on a less ambitious scale than the later Lorca work but though
the poems - and the music - are more compact the music is no less
powerful. The music contained on disc three is, perhaps, more of a
mixed bag than anywhere else in the collection. The works range widely.
On the one hand we have Praktisch Deutsch, which is
a four-movement work in which the choir speaks words from a German
phrase-book. Frankly, I find the results hideous but others may react
more positively. The same is true - perhaps even more true - of Ludus
verbalis, a mercifully short four-movement piece in which
individual German pronouns are spoken by the choir: I’ll not
be listening to that again - life is too short! On the other hand
we have the resourceful, eloquent writing of Katedralen
and the fine Rilke setting, Die erste Elegie. Those
are much more to my taste, as is Halavanhimmean
alla (‘In the shade of the willow’). This three-movement
work is an adaptation for choir of three solo items from Rautavaara’s
opera Aleksis Kivi (1996). These are very beautiful.

I suppose it’s inevitable that in a collection running to some
four-and-a-half hours of music there are a few pieces that one doesn’t
regard as favourably as the rest. However, as I hope has been evident
from the above remarks, Rautavaara’s choral music leave an impression
that is, for the most part, very positive indeed. He writes extremely
effectively for voices and has a remarkable and inventive ear for
sonorities - the latter a trait that’s readily apparent also
in the orchestral scores by him that I’ve heard. His admirers
will probably already own some or all of these recordings but anyone
who has some of Rautavaara’s orchestral pieces in their collection
would be well advised to add this set.

The performances, mainly by the Finnish Radio Chamber Choir, are consistently
very fine and the recorded sound is excellent throughout. The documentation
is exemplary, including a very useful set of notes and all the texts
with English translations. The only complaint I’d have about
the booklet is that the typeface is very small and somewhat faint;
I wouldn’t point this out were it not for the fact that it makes
it hard to follow the Finnish words. That, however, is the only cavil
about a compelling release that continues Ondine’s doughty championship
of Finland’s leading living composer.